By Iddi Yire, GNA
Accra, Oct. 21, GNA – President John Dramani Mahama, has touted his administration’s flagship “The Big Push Infrastructure Programme”, a $10 billion initiative designed to accelerate national infrastructure development, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and complete stalled legacy projects across the country.
“We are building infrastructure through the Big Push Programme. It is a $10 billion programme over five years, with $2 billion allocated each year,” the President said in his address at the Financial Times (FT) Africa Summit in London.
“We have started with road infrastructure, but we are adding schools, hospitals, irrigation schemes and other projects.”
The 13th edition of the two-day forum convenes global business leaders, policymakers, and heads of state under the theme “Mobilising Growth in a New Global Order”.
President Mahama said the reforms had freed up quite a lot of resources for the Government to do that work.
He noted that this year, the Finance Minister was going to launch the New Economy Plan involving a self-financed $10 billion, over a four-year period.
The President said the money would be invested in nine job-rich areas, including tourism, energy, agriculture, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals, textiles and garments; stating that that was being made possible by the adjustment they were making to their primary balance.
He said during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) period, it was 1.5 per cent, and “we have agreed with the IMF to reduce it to 0.5 percent,” he said.
The President noted that the additional fiscal space of one percentage point would go into the sectors he had mentioned.
“However, the economy is holding steadily. Our currency is stable, and interest rates are still falling. I think there is a lot we can do for ourselves, even as we call for reform of the global order,” the President said.
Touching on the global financial system and Africa’s debt burden, President Mahama said the global order was rigged against Africa.
“We contribute just four per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, yet we borrow at eight times the cost to deal with the effects of flooding, forest fires and other climate-related challenges.”
He said, “every year, about $80 billion goes out in interest payments and debt repayments, declaring that another $90 billion goes out through illicit financial flows, transfer pricing and related practices”.
He said Oversees Development Assistance (ODA) had also fallen and that in 2025, it fell by 23.5 per cent, and this year it was expected to fall further.
President Mahama said Africa was a very resilient continent and that more than $200 billion goes out every year while ODA continues to dwindle, saying, he wondered how Europe would have survived under those conditions, yet Africa was still on the map.
GNA
Edited by Linda Asante Agyei